Are The Kennedys Cursed?

With a net worth of $500 million, and a US President, two senators, and a US Ambassador in the family, in the 1960s the Kennedys were one of the wealthiest and most successful dynasties in the world But their fortune has been plagued with murder, casualties, illness, miscarriage, and suicide

The family who have everything aren’t so lucky after all Are the stories of a Kennedy family curse really true? According to political expert Edward Klein, the deadly curse is thought to have haunted the Kennedys for as long as 150 years Two decades before he met his own fate, JFK’s sister, Rosemary, was forced to undergo a lobotomy to control her mood swings But the operation went horribly wrong, leaving her permanently disabled and brain damaged Then in 1944, JFK’s brother Joe Kennedy Jr, died when his plane exploded over England

But it wasn’t until President Kennedy’s death on November 22nd, 1963 that the curse tightened its grip on the unsuspecting Kennedy family In Dallas, Texas, JFK was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald while driving through the city in his motorcade One year later, Kennedy’s youngest brother, and US Senator Ted Kennedy, was in a plane crash, which killed his aide and the pilot In 1968, their brother Robert F

Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, moments after his victory in the California presidential primary Thirteen months later, Ted Kennedy escaped death once again, in the Chappaquiddick incident While driving back from a party, Ted drove his car into a lake on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, accidentally drowning his passenger aide, Mary Jo Kopechne Kennedy didn’t report the incident for 10 hours Owing to the suspicions of the crash, he made an announcement, explaining his side of the story

This was the first time that the Kennedy curse had been mentioned in public And it was only just getting started By definition, a curse is a supernatural intervention by vengeful forces or beings, which intends to cause someone harm Not since the ancient mythological family of Atreus has there been a family hounded with such adversity In the Greek tale, it’s said that the royal ancestor of this family, Tantalus, committed such a heinous crime against the Gods that his descendants were cursed for eternity

Could it be that the Kennedys were also being punished for their forefathers’ crimes? In his book, ‘The Kennedy Curse’, Edward Klein suggests that this apparent curse is the consequence of generations of entitlement, reckless thrill-seeking, and narcissistic behaviour born out of American privilege According to Klein, it was ‘the result of the destructive collision between the Kennedy’s fantasy of omnipotence – an unremitting desire to get away with things that others cannot’ The curse, it seemed, was relentless In August 1973 Joseph P Kennedy II was in a car crash, paralysing his passenger, Pam Kelley

That same year Ted Kennedy Jr had his leg amputated, due to bone cancer In 1984, one of Robert Kennedy’s sons, David Kennedy, died of a cocaine overdose aged just 28 In 1997, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy died in a skiing accident in Colorado And two years later, JFK’s son, John Kennedy Jr, died with his wife and sister in-law, when his plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, merely days after he was declared a frontrunner for the New York senate seat

These are all but a few of the Kennedy tragedies Journalist Maureen Callahan believes that the root of the family’s unfortunate fate is simply the natural fallout for a household riddled with drunks, adulterers, and womanisers – and that the female Kennedys, too, suffered greatly at the hands of this curse Most recently in 2012, Mary Richardson Kennedy, wife of Robert F Kennedy Jr, hanged herself at her home Decades prior, America’s first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, suffered endless difficult pregnancies while her husband was running the country

In their struggle to build a happy family, the Kennedys endured miscarriages, a stillborn, and the death of a child In 1975, Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death with a golf club by Robert Kennedy’s nephew, Michael Skakel And in 2011, Kara Kennedy died aged just 51, of a heart attack in a health club Whether it is a curse, a consequence, or merely coincidence, it is without doubt that America’s elite family has persevered through decades of suffering Yet today they remain defining figures in US culture